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Amy Elaine Martin “Social Media Smackdown” May 23, 2011 Final Assignment- Caren Levine

VoiceThread (voicethread.com)is a way to create portfolios amongst your class, that feature vocaldescriptions, responses, discussions, stories or comments that correspond to any visual content. This tool was specifically tailored to K-12 educational purposes. Teachers are able to exert a large amount of control over their students’ individual portfolios, whom their students’ are “friends’ with on this site, and who can comment on their students work. Additionally, teachers screen each “comment” before it actually is posted to their students work. Visitors can verbally post their comments, and hear the comments left by other people that correspond to each individual students own work. Comments can be left in both writing and voice, and can incorporate interactive feedback( for example, actual highlighting of pieces of the picture.) Parents and the greater school community may be invited to comment on individual students’ projects or group and class work. Not only do individual students have their own portfolio but the class as a whole can display their work, as if in a virtual science or literature fair. This product does cost schools, about sixty dollars a year for an individual classroom.  I see many opportunities to incorporate this technology into my Judaic Studies classroom. In general, it is a great tool to differentiate within your classroom. Students who have difficulty expressing themselves in writing might be able to use this as an alternative, and yet still be able to present their work to others. Additionally, this resource is a great way to appeal to multiple intelligences and switch things up for your entire classroom by having them speak their answers, rather than write. For students who may be reluctant to speak up in class, this is a great way to ensure that they do respond to their classmates work. Additionally, this tool encourages peer-review. VoiceThread does not have to be a way of eliminating written work, it can be a way of practicing oration skills. Practically, VoiceThread could be used in the Judaic Studies Classroom in many varied ways. It can be a way for students to write dvari torah and then hear themselves reading, in an emotive way and convincing way, their dvars. I also thought that VoiceThread could be used as an accompaniment to visual midrash, as a way for students to explain the ideas behind their art, or as a way to read traditional midrash in comparision to this visual midrash, or to read aloud their own creative writing style of midrash. Another way to use VoiceThread is to have students practice reading pasukim aloud, and to have other students, or the teacher, comment on whether their pronunciation was correct. Additionally, pictures from a class trip, or school-wide trip to Israel, could be narrated by the students, who could give reports about each place they visited, the history behind it, or the pasukim where it is mentioned in the Torah. VoiceThread could also be used to create a “spoken word” project of the liturgy used in class prayer that could be shared with parents and the school wide community. This tool is so great, because it is easily adaptable to different age groups and subject matter. A High School Talmud teacher could used it to create a class-wide “Oral Torah”, and a first grade Judaics teacher could use it to record brachot that kids have learned and pictures they made of the corresponding food to each brachot.

Since this resource costs money, I wasn’t able to play around with it and attempt to create me own VoiceThread, so I wasn’t able to see how user friendly it is and I am unable to offer tips on how to best use this technology. Yet, amongst many of the online resources I’ve seen, it seems to be one of the most applicable to different ages and subject matter and I would definitely urge my administration to buy this tool for my own personal classroom.